Illegal to hand PoWs to US, claim ministers

British cabinet ministers are warning that it would be illegal for Tony Blair to bow to US demands for Iraqi prisoners of war captured by the British to be handed over to the US for trial or imprisonment in America.

They are checking reports that paramilitaries captured by the British will eventually be segregated from regular prisoners of war and then handed to the US military police before being sent to the US base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for questioning.

Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, has told MPs that more than half of the 8,000 Iraqi PoWs are being held by the British.

Cabinet ministers are warning that prisoners of war captured by the British cannot be handed to the US for extradition since the US still uses the death penalty.

One government source warned that it would be entirely unacceptable for British captured prisoners of war to be taken to Guantanamo Bay. He argued that even if Osama bin Laden was captured in Britain, it would be unlawful to hand him over to the US for trial because of the death penalty there.

The doubtful legality of the US treatment of prisoners taken in Afghanistan has still not been settled in the higher American courts, British ministerial sources pointed out. Around 640 alleged Taliban and al-Qaida fighters are being held at the US naval base. Tony Blair has sounded lukewarm about the prisoners' treatment.

The prime minister's spokesman has so far only given an undertaking that Iraqi prisoners of war will be treated in line with the Geneva convention, but has not ruled out their transfer to Guantanamo Bay.

Senior military spokesmen for the US have toughened their vocabulary to denounce the militia forces during the past week.

General Vince Brooks has several times called them "terror squads" and members of "terroristic behaving organisations". This language would allow the US to treat the Iraqi paramilitaries as unlawful combatants in line with the Taliban.

The stance of some British cabinet ministers on the PoW issue is supported by senior British officers in Kuwait, who have made it clear that they would prefer plainclothes fighters, paramilitaries and the Fedayeen to be subjected to due judicial process for war crimes, possibly through the new international criminal court.

The US has refused to sign up to the international criminal court and has even suggested it would "rescue" any US soldiers that were to be tried at the court.

A spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross said that anyone captured in a war zone, whether in military uniform or civilian clothes, had to be treated as a PoW under the Geneva Convention. The convention was extended in 1977 to protect some guerrilla combatants.

· The United States Congress is set to award Tony Blair the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honour the legislature can bestow, in recognition of his "commitment to secure the world from the threat of terrorism".

The legislation to award Mr Blair the medal - which would make him its first British recipient since Winston Churchill - now has the two sponsors it needs, Senator Elizabeth Dole and Congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite, both Republicans.